Today's glorious spring moment

This is how one part of the garden looked this afternoon. We had three nights of serious frosts over the holiday weekend, and the Sugar Tyme crab apple tree above was hit, but thankfully the flowers appear to have weathered the cold better than it appeared at first.

The leaves of some hostas were also damaged, as were new leaves on oak and ash trees and the leaves and flowers of the French lilacs. My favorite Korean lilacs are fine because they were still in bud. What can you do? Mother Nature delivers good and bad.

I'm happy to report that my program of setting garden bootcamp days for early in the week and keeping Thursdays and Fridays for other things is going well so far.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Peony plant combo

June is peony month, and the first peony that comes out in my garden is this luscious Japanese peoney. Unfortunately, I have lost the tag and so I have no idea what the cultivar name is.

Japanese peonies are actually a double form made up of five or more petals around a centre of stamens with non-pollen bearing anthers that look like a soft mound of small petals. They are sometimes called anemone-flowered because the stamens in the centre look like narrow petals.

Anyway, all that technical stuff aside (which I learned when I wrote an article on peonies for Canadian Gardening magazine), this is a sensational peony. Its bloom time is perfectly co-ordinated with 'Purple Sensation' alliums and I love the two together. What a great garden duet!